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Online Quality Committee
Meeting Minutes
June 22, 2005
Online Quality Committee

The Online Quality Committee met on June 22, 2005 at 12:35 PM. After the call to order and roll call, the committee members introduced themselves, so that the new members could have a better sense of the committee. Next on the agenda was the approval of the agenda and the naming of the recorder. Stephen Sarazin was named as the recorder

ORIENTATION: Next, Susan Simpson gave a basic overview of the committee and then went on to the plans for the coming year. The committee will be reviewing the database guidelines recently promulgated by Bobbi Thorpe and involving itself in requests for revision over time. Specifically, the committee will need to design specific procedures for requesting changes. Also, Susan is interested in trying to encourage more complete and consistent series and character headings in records for fiction items. The committee had some questions about how this would happen, what the scope would be. The consensus was to refer the issue to reference staff so that they could suggest what might be useful to them and to patrons. Finally, the committee is going to look at perhaps narrowing options on the Advanced Search drop-down to include only useful item types. Next on the agenda was approval of the minutes of April 28, 2005. The minutes were edited to correct the spelling of Crystal Stratton's name, and approved.

PROGRESS REPORTS: Susan reported that Des had completed simplification of the Sweetwater and Teton circ maps. Bobbi reported that she is continuing to work on the follow-up to the authorizing process, going through reports and making corrections. She estimated that the next authority control process would be in 8-10 months, and that the no-edit time for that process would be much shorter. That process will only cover items added since the last "pull" on February 7, 2005. Lastly, Susan, Sukey, and Bobbi summarized the WYLD annual meeting. Susan said sign-up for Bobbi's database-related workshops was brisk, though Bobbi said she wasn't sure there was 100% attendance, though there were a lot of participants there.

INDEXING COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATIONS: The committee approved, after the fact, the indexing changes recommended by the subcommittee and implemented by WYLD. The committee also thanked the subcommittee members for their work.

INPROCESS: Stephen reported that the issue with the display of "INPROCESS" in the OPAC has been fixed.

UPDATES, ADDITIONS; TO DATABASE GUIDELINES: Brian Greene discussed his email on May 31st regarding the database guidelines and clarified that information to note that the new webform supersedes some of what he wrote and that he wants to wait until the database guidelines can be fully distributed to all members before actively soliciting feedback.

The committee then discussed the specifics of the webform as a feedback mechanism. The committee was not able to decide whether the form should go to the committee members directly or to the WYLD staff first, so that issue was tabled for further discussion. In the meantime, it was agreed that an email could be sent out that any guidelines questions or feedback can go to Bobbi until the form is active.

SPAM: Brian discussed some of the spam issues WYLD is dealing with, both with the form and in general. He gave some staggering numbers as to the amount of spam state government gets and the increasing effectiveness of filters.

RESERVERM: The committee has voted to eliminate RESERVERM. It is still used. It was agreed that Carol Brown will contact the academic libraries still using the item type, and Brian will contact the VA library that is using it. The libraries will need to make the edits individually themselves, as the committee has no way of knowing what item types they should be changed to for each library, so no global change is possible.

Brian noted that Des is out for 3-5 weeks with her baby, and then will be slowly re-integrating into the workplace with just a few hours per week at first. The last item of new business was the selection of a time for the next meeting. The committee agreed on August 29th at 3:30 PM.

Stephen Sarazin